We are standing on a roof\, looking down over the ledg
e from atop a five-story building. It is a northern winter. Cold.
p>\n

One has to wonder if any of the four men thought to jump\, as a curi
ous crowd began to assemble\, with bystanders gazing upward…

\n

3
Savile Row. London. January 30th\, 1969. The last public appearance of a cu
ltural phenomenon called The Beatles transpired for a brief forty-five minu
tes during lunch that day. By this time\, they had ceased to exist as a uni
fied entity. Indeed\, they had over the past three years collapsed and sepa
rated into four individuals\, each their own nation state: One Paul\, one J
ohn\, one Ringo\, one George…

\n

So begins Michael Rakowitz’s T
he Breakup\, a ten-part radio series originally produced for a Palestin
ian station in Ramallah\, and also a multifacted multimedia event at Lombar
d Freid Gallery\, New York\, featuring video\, drawings\, memorabilia real
and imagined\, and a limited-edition gatefold vinyl LP. The Breakup
considers the intricacies of The Beatles’ 1969 disbanding as an example of
a collaboration that grinds to a halt amid unraveling negotiations and fail
ed communication.

\n

Working from a complete set of the 150-hour audio
tapes generated during the shooting of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary
Let It Be\, Rakowitz created a series of cascading narratives of the
rise and fall of The Beatles\, pinpointing the precise moment when alienat
ion and isolation gave way to collapse\, amid marathon meetings\, wheedling
s\, rehearsals\, and conflicts. There were\, clearly\, allegorical echoes b
etween that collapse and the breakdown of political negotiations in Israel\
, Palestine\, and across a Middle East that once dreamed of uniting under t
he banner of Pan-Arabism. But there was\, oddly\, a more direct connection:
those 1969 rehearsals were supposed to lead to their first live performanc
e in three years\, and Paul McCartney’s dream was for The Beatles to make t
heir triumphant return with a concert in North Africa—amphitheatres in El J
em\, Tunisia and Sabratha\, Libya were booked. The band ultimately reached
an impasse\; Ringo and George vetoed the final proposal. The epic concert i
n the “exotic location” would not materialize\, and the compromise was a sh
ort and sweet and pathetic rooftop concert one chilly afternoon in London.
Disembodied but familiar voices wafted over pedestrians in the street\, bro
adcasted from the same height as church bells or minarets: one final call t
o prayer for the fanatics down below.

\n

The Breakup culminated
in a recreation of that final concert\, three decades later\, against the
backdrop of the Old City and the Dome of the Rock. Members of the celebrate
d Palestinian band Sabreen—who met at university in the early 1980s and beg
an their career playing Beatles songs at wedding parties\, and who had brok
en up in 2002—came together to perform five Arabic-inflected Beatles songs
on the roof of the Swedish Christian Study Centre in Jerusalem.

\n

The
songs were selected and ordered to form a kind of poem about collaboration
and collapse\, and about dreams that cannot be deferred indefinitely.

\
n

TWO OF US

\n

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

\n

DON’T LET ME DOWN
p>\n

GET BACK

\n

LET IT BE

\n

Sabreen’s concert will be availab
le for purchase as a deluxe long-playing record\, pressed on sky-blue vinyl
\, along with extensive liner notes documenting The Breakup’s variou
s iterations. Live in Jerusalem 2010 is a joint project of Lombard Freid Ga
llery and Bidoun Projects.